Robert Dallek
Audio & Video

The 20th-century American Presidency is something of a mystery. Some Presidents performed exceptionally well in office, displaying strong leadership and winning the respect of the American people as well as the rest of the world.

In Camelot's Court, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy's administration - including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam - were indelible.

Robert Dallek talked about the political career and the Presidential tenure of Harry Truman. He is the author of Harry S. Truman: The 33rd President, 1945-1953, part of The American Presidents Series (Times Books; September 2, 2008).

In a striking reinterpretation of the postwar years, historian Robert Dallek examines what drove leaders around the globe—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Mao, de Gaulle, and Truman—to rely on traditional power politics, and points out the lessons we can draw from their mistakes.

In the thirty-fourth in a series on American presidents, scholars discussed the life and career of John F. Kennedy. Among the issues they addressed were his childhood, his Navy career, his early political career, his positions on civil rights and foreign policy, and his assassination.

In his profile of JFK's cabinet, Dallek, author of the acclaimed biography of Kennedy, An Unfinished Life, presents a team of rivals—a group of brilliant individuals more notable for their differences of opinion than for presenting a united front.